Drive Theatre Company

Being “homeless” is something that’s usually seen as a bad thing.  And in many ways, it is.  You don’t have that place you can always count on being there for you, where you have your own private space, you can keep your belongings, and make as much work as your heart desires.  But at least in the LA theatre scene, having a home comes at a great price.  Most small companies that have homes struggle every year to maintain the space that they call home.  They may be relying on city grants to pay the bulk of it, or they rely heavily on ticket sales, or they may have worked out a negotiation with the city itself to be the resident company there for X number of years (under certain conditions that usually aren’t too easy to meet).  Whatever the case may be, life’s tough for the resident small theatre company, and artistic directors in those situations find themselves constantly playing producer, which may not have been their original intent when forming the company.  That may be great for some, but for many it detracts from their own personal artistic mission.

On the other side of that, there’s the homeless option.  True, you miss out on all the perks, but you can be much more financially stable without having to worry about making the rent each month or meeting contractual obligations.  And what if an outside job opportunity came along that would take you out of town for a month?  You’d have to find someone to cover for you on all the responsibilities you have in maintaining the space, and that’s no simple task.

Bottom line, Drive Theatre Company is homeless.  And I’m quite happy that way (for now).  We’ve been looking all around town at different rental venues, taking tours, walking the neighborhoods, checking out parking, etc.   We’ve laid out a few parameters:

1.  Theatre must seat 50 or fewer.

2.  Theatre must be a theatre, with traditional lights, sound, booth, stage, seats, dressing room, etc.

3.  Theatre rent must be under $1,000/weekend (Thursday-Saturday night performances) and allow us to do a 3-week run in April/May.

4.  Rehearsal space at the theatre is a plus.

5.  Theatre must be in Los Angeles but must not be in Hollywood’s ‘Theatre Row’.

Those are the most important things for us–here’s why.

As a new company, we can count on our friends and nearby family to attend our first show.  We can hope that we’ll market well and attract some from the LA theatre community and some who are interested in the material of the play.  We have no existing audience, and therefore cannot expect to fill more than a 50-seat house with our first show.

Just like with picking the right first play, we feel it’s necessary that the first play is performed in a theatre so we may establish ourselves first and foremost as a “traditional” theatre company (as much as it pains me to say that word).  Our aspirations to be nationally-working theatre directors are best served exercising our abilities inside a theatre, and while our work may take us to found spaces or outdoor venues in the future, this first show should happen in the “traditional” style.

We don’t have money.  Zero.  We’ll be raising it all from the ground up, relying on donations and fundraisers to foot the bill of this first show.  We’ve researched theatre rentals in LA and know that it’s very possible to rent a theatre under our conditions for $1,000 or less, so we’ll keep looking until we find one that best fits our pretend budget.

The show needs to rehearse somewhere, and it makes matters a lot easier if we can do it all at the same place.  Most rental theatres offer special discount packages for booking rehearsal space with them on top of the performances, so if you have to pay for rehearsal space, you might as well do it for a discount.

Theatre Row.  I would be ashamed to show people from out-of-town that stretch of theatres on Santa Monica Blvd. and tell them that this is Los Angeles’ prestigious “Theatre Row”.  Tim and I personally dislike Hollywood and avoid it as often as possible.  Everything from the constant traffic, lack of parking, unsafe neighborhoods, higher rent, and worst of all–lack of any community–makes this area a terrible place to do creative work.  Granted, there are a few theatre companies that are resident at their theatres in Theatre Row who are the exception, but they don’t do rentals and I’m sure they still have to fight to make their venues feel creatively stimulating.  So we are determined to avoid this stretch of concrete wasteland.

What does that leave us with?  Well, the Attic Theatre, located between Culver City and Mid City is currently our top pick.  We’re checking on a few others, but we liked what we saw when we toured the space and assuming they’re still available when we get word on the rights for our first show, we’ll likely be producing there.  Time will tell!